Chapter 9

PENNY

I’ve just cleared the breakfast dishes and have put a loaf of bread in the oven for lunch, honey whole wheat, when I nestle on the couch next to Dex. “Did you have a good time last night?”

He doesn’t take his eyes off the newspaper. “Yes, it was a good party.” He has a headache, I know. I saw him reach for the aspirin after he woke up.

I smile when I think of the way he carried me up the stairs to our bed and held me like he used to. But a mere eight hours later, the spell has lifted. He seems distracted and sullen.

He sets the paper down on the coffee table and turns to me. “I’m going to be spending the next week in my studio,” he says matter-of-factly.

I bite my lip. “I don’t understand.”

“What don’t you understand?” he snaps. “I have to work. And that’s that.”

I stand up and walk to the kitchen. My eyes sting.

“Penny,” Dex says, his face momentarily softened.

I nod, then open the oven door and peer in at my bread, which is rising nicely and taking on a perfect shade of golden brown. I hover long enough to let a lone tear fall from my eye. It lands on the oven door and evaporates as if it never existed.

“Darling,” Dex continues, walking to the kitchen. “Please, don’t take my work so personally.”

Dex is right, of course. He’s an artist. And being married to one requires the patience of a Tibetan monk. Hasn’t Dex always said that he divorced his first wife because she required constant maintenance? No, I don’t want to be high maintenance, and yet I do want to be loved. Is it too much to ask for him to come home each night?

“I’m sorry,” I say, finally facing him. “I just hate it when you’re gone so long. I get lonely here.”

“My psychiatrist thinks alone time is good for me,” he says.

I want to say, “Does your psychiatrist ever consider what’s good for me, your wife?” But I let a few moments pass, and then I nod. “Dex, you know I only want you to be happy.”

He pulls me close to him and kisses my cheek. “That’s why I love you so much.”

Dex left before noon, opting for the café downtown over a homemade Reuben sandwich on fresh-baked bread. I try not to take it personally and wrap the extra sandwich I made in waxed paper before putting it in the fridge, which is when I hear a quiet knock at the back door.

I look up and see Jimmy standing on the deck outside, with his nose pressed up against the glass.

“Morning, honey,” I say.

“Can I come in?” he asks, wide-eyed.

“Does your mother know where you are?”

He shrugs. “She’s working today. Besides, she doesn’t care where I am as long as I’m not bothering her.”

“I’m sure that’s not the case, Jimmy,” I say.

He walks into the living room and plops onto the couch. “It always smells nice in your house,” he says. “Like a bakery.”

“Thanks,” I reply. “Are you hungry?”

He nods.

I hand him Dex’s sandwich and he unwraps it hastily. “I got an A on my book report,” he says between bites.

“Good job, honey,” I say. “I bet your mother was proud.”

He shakes his head. “She doesn’t like bugs.”

“Bugs?”

“The book was about bugs.”

“Oh.”

“She wanted me to do a report on a book about a guy named Fried.”

“Do you mean Freud?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

I smile. “I’ll be honest,” I say, “I like bugs better.”

Jimmy looks vindicated. “Will you take me out in the canoe?”

“I don’t know,” I say, remembering Naomi’s warnings about Jimmy. “Your parents will be looking for you soon.”

He shakes his head, and something about his eyes, pleading, lonely, makes me say OK. “But we can’t be out long.”

He stands up and wraps his arms around my waist. “Thank you, Penny.”

The lake is glorious today, sparkling and smooth as glass. The canoe glides through the water effortlessly, like a knife through butter.

After we paddle out to the center of the lake, we stop and bob on the water for a while. It’s peaceful here. Jimmy sets his oar down in the well of the canoe and turns around in his seat up front to face me.

“I wish I was good at something,” he says suddenly.

“Oh, Jimmy, you’re good at lots of things.”

He shakes his head. “I’m not smart in school.”

“That’s not true,” I say. “You just haven’t found your thing yet—you know, your special skill. Everyone has one. It just takes a while to figure out what it is.”

He’s wide-eyed. “What’s yours?”

“Well, I do like to bake.”

“You make good cookies,” he says.

“Someday I’d like to open a bakery.”

He looks thoughtful for a moment, then smiles to himself. “I’d like to be a comic strip writer.”

“Jimmy!” I exclaim. “That’s a wonderful goal!”

He pulls a piece of paper from his pocket and hands it to me. It’s folded several times into a small square, and I unfold it carefully.

“It’s not very good,” he says quickly.

I shake my head, astonished by the way he drew the people and dog in the little comic strip, then smile at the punch line. “It’s excellent,” I say. “You should show this to your parents.”

Jimmy shakes his head and quickly retrieves his creation, folding it again before tucking it in his pocket. “No. They don’t understand comics.”

“Well, they understand talent, and they’ll be very proud of you.”

He shrugs and turns back to the water, and I look to the shore, where our dock looks like a tiny speck in the distance.

“Penny?” he asks, turning to me again. “Will you ever have a baby?”

I smile nervously, a bit startled by his question. I think of the last time I spoke to Dex about the subject. He patted my knee and said, “Become a father at my age?” And yet, I long for a child. I can’t help but think that if I had a baby, I wouldn’t feel so alone. That it might complete the missing piece of me, fill the hairline crack in my heart that I knew Dex can never fully occupy. But after almost three years of marriage, it has become clear that something is wrong. And maybe that something is me.

“Jimmy,” I say, choosing my words carefully, “I’d love to have a baby, more than anything in the world. But sometimes things don’t work out the way you want them to.”

“It’s not fair,” he says, frowning. “You want a child and don’t have one, and Mother has me, but she never wanted one.”

“Oh, dear,” I say quickly. “Don’t say that. You know that’s not true. Your mother loves you very much.”

He doesn’t say anything else as we paddle back to the dock, but then his eyes light up when he sees Collin on his boat. He’s fastening a thin piece of wood in place at the stern. “Can we go say hello to him?”

I don’t see the harm in paddling over, so I nod and change course, parking the canoe in front of Collin’s deck.

“Well, hello there,” he says, tipping his cap at us.

Without asking permission, Jimmy leaps out of the canoe onto the deck. “May I see your boat?”

“Jimmy, I—”

“It’s all right,” Collin says kindly. “I could use another pair of hands this afternoon.”

“Really?” Jimmy beams. “I’m good at helping.”

I smile. “As long as you don’t mind.”

I watch the two of them attach the piece of wood to the boat. Jimmy presses his fingers against the edge as if he’s been given the most important job of his life and he’s determined to succeed.

“There,” Collin says. “Now, we’ll varnish it to match the rest of the wood here.” He hands Jimmy a small can and a brush and watches as the child paints the strip with great care.

“That’s the way,” Collin says encouragingly. “You’d make a fine shipbuilder.”

He’d make a good father; that much is clear. I wince when I think about the way Dex is with children, anxious and awkward. It’s not his fault, though. He never knew love as a child. He was never taught how to be around children. Or is it something that needs teaching? Is it something you’re born with? Still, I don’t blame Dex; I just admire Collin’s gentle ways with Jimmy and smile to myself.

“There,” Collin says. “It’s perfect. I couldn’t have finished this part without you.”

Jimmy casts a glance at me, still in the canoe, then back at Collin. “Can I help you again, some other time?”

“You mean, you’re willing to be my assistant? Because I’ve been looking for a good assistant. Someone with strong, steady hands like yours.”

“I’d like to be your assistant,” the boy says earnestly.

“Good, then. You can—”

We all turn when we hear the click-clack of heels on the dock. The tread of an irritated woman.

Naomi. She glances at me and grimaces before turning to her son.

I sense Jimmy’s nervousness.

“Jimmy Allan Clyde,” she says. “Get over here at once.”

Jimmy nods quickly and steps out of the sailboat. “Yes, Mother.”

She sighs. “You’re filthy. I won’t have you wearing your shoes in my living room again.” She snaps her fingers. “Penny, bring him home.”

Collin watches in silence as Jimmy climbs back into the canoe. He casts me an apologetic smile, and I nod without saying anything.

I paddle Jimmy to his back deck and steady the canoe so he can climb out. “Mama,” he says exuberantly. “I helped Collin build his boat!”

“That’s the last time you’ll be doing that,” she snaps. “Get inside.”

“But Mama,” he pleads.

She closes her eyes tightly and points to the back door. He obeys.

“How dare you,” she says to me. Tears tinged with black mascara stain her face.

“I only, I . . .” I don’t know what to say.

“Leave my son alone,” she says. “He doesn’t need your pity.”

“But I wasn’t—”

“You think I’m a bad mother, don’t you?”

“No, I—”

“Well, save your self-righteousness. He is my son, and you can get your hooks out of him right now.”

“Yes,” I say, her words stinging as I paddle away.

I look behind me once, and Naomi’s seated on the ground, on her knees with her head hanging down over her hands. She’s crying—sobbing, really. I feel a pang of emotion then. I’m surprised by it. I don’t expect to feel anything for Naomi, this woman who’s been cold to me since the day I arrived on Boat Street. And yet I see her now, aching like I ache. I see her with new eyes. For once I detect the hidden wrinkles in her carefully starched and pressed world.

Poor Jimmy. I wish I could fix his problems. I wish I could make life happier for him somehow. I grab the rope on the edge of the canoe and wrap it around the cleat in front of my houseboat. The wind has picked up, and I shiver. Upstairs, I select a yellow cashmere cardigan from the closet, remembering how Dex brought it home in March with matching yellow earrings. I slip my arm into the sweater. It feels like warm butter on my skin, luxurious. Dex always buys the best. I notice my dress from last night lying on the chair. I think of Collin and retrieve the ticket I tucked in the pocket. I hold it in my hands for a moment, staring at its wrinkles, studying the words. May 15, 1959. He went to see the movie just last month. With who? The thought makes me feel guilty. Wasn’t that part of my brain supposed to have been lobotomized when I took my marriage vows? I walk to the porthole above the bed, and glance toward Collin’s houseboat, but he isn’t there. I think about how wonderful he was with Jimmy. It makes something flicker inside me. I stare at the sailboat. I’d like to sail away on it, but I know I never will. I never could.

I crouch down beside the dresser and reach for the little brass key I keep in a slat below the bottom drawer. I’ve never liked the dresser, with those awful drawer pulls that look like roaring lions, but a friend of Dex’s who makes furniture gave it to him as a birthday present, and it didn’t seem right to ask him to replace it.

Downstairs, I kneel beside the only piece of furniture I brought to the houseboat—Grandma Rose’s old chest. When I was a little girl, I used to think it was a treasure chest, and maybe it was. Grandma said she’d fallen in love with a seaman before she met Grandpa. She said he’d given it to her as a gift and that she’d kept it, even after she and Grandpa got married. I never knew anything more about her mysterious seaman, but I saw the way Grandma talked about him. I know she still loved him, but I will never know why they parted. And I’ll never know what treasure the chest, lined with its red silk fabric, once held.

For me, Grandma stocked it with the sort of treasure that appeals to little girls: porcelain dolls of varying sizes, a silver brush and comb set, four teacups painted with roses, and an old cigar box filled with costume jewelry. Over the years, I’ve tucked in other things—the bracelet Mama gave me on my sixteenth birthday, a book of poems about the sea, the acceptance letter from Miss Higgins Academy, my blue notebook filled with recipes.

At first it felt wrong to keep these things, this part of myself, from Dexter. But he kept things from me, too. Big things. I found a photo of his first wife in his desk drawer, and letters. He didn’t mention a word of his past before we were married. When I finally worked up the courage to ask him about his ex-wife, he did two things: acknowledge that, yes, he was married before, and tell me never to bring up the subject again.

Yes, Dexter has secrets, and so can I. I slip my key into the little lock and lift the lid, breathing in the familiar scent of my past—musty, floral, and damp like a rainy night. I survey the treasures inside. Like old friends, they’re all there, just as I left them. I tuck Collin’s ticket inside, beside a box of old photos, then close the lid and secure the lock again.